RUSH: Here is Matthew in Jacksonville, North Carolina. I’m glad you waited. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. How are you today?
RUSH: Fine, sir. Thank you very much.
CALLER: I’m a long-term listener. I discovered you because of your television show, and I’ve been listening ever since. I used to drive into work and listen to you on KDKA and record your program on the road and then listen to it again while I was at work.
RUSH: That is devotion. Thank you very much, sir.
CALLER: It occurred to me… You were just talking about income taxes and how oppressive they are. It occurred to me that I think I heard that the top 5% of the income earners are paying more than half of the taxes that are collected.
RUSH: Oh, that’s true.
CALLER: Okay. Now, if you couple that with the millions of people that are out of work, I have to wonder: Are there more people out of work because of Obama’s policies than are actually paying the taxes? Now…
RUSH: Wait a minute. Are there more people out of work because of Obama’s policies than are actually paying taxes?
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: I’m confused because the number is either 47% or 49% of Americans already don’t pay income tax, before Obama came along. Maybe two or three percent has been added to that. But tax policy leading up to Obama… You know, politicians have pandered to the middle class forever, and there’s a whole boatload of Americans not paying income tax right now. I think the numbers, depending who you talk to, is 47% or 49%. The top 5% number you’re talking about, it’s 59% of all tax revenue is paid by the top 5%.
CALLER: Yes, sir. Those are the numbers that I remember. Yes, thank you.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So here’s my comment, and this is not mine. I got it from my wife. She says that those are nameless and faceless people. You know, 50 or 60 million people are out of work, but there are four people that we can put names and faces to who are victims of Obama’s policies. Our ambassador, two [SEALs], and another.
RUSH: (laughs) Yes! I didn’t mean to laugh.
CALLER: No, I understand.
RUSH: That’s exactly right. I’m still confused what your point is about the unemployed and paying taxes and the numbers. What was the point you’re trying to make? I don’t want you to go away dissatisfied ’cause I didn’t understand what you meant. Try again.
CALLER: My point was that there are more people out of work because of Obama than are paying the taxes. You’re right. I understand now. More people are paying the taxes than are not paying anything.
RUSH: Well, we’ve lost 2.5 million jobs from the jobs universe since Obama took office. I ran through the numbers yesterday. He claims he’s created 4.5 million jobs. The actual net number is 1.3 million, but that’s before you factor in the jobs lost on all of the newly unemployed. There isn’t any job creation taking place. We’re not in a job growth situation.
And, by definition, those people are not paying any income taxes. So the burden of paying income taxes is falling on an increasingly smaller group of people. Now, if that’s your point, you are exactly right. An increasingly smaller group of people is paying a larger and larger share of the income tax burden because there are fewer of them working. But tax receipts are also down. That’s one of the reasons why the deficit’s going up. It’s a mess!
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RUSH: The net loss is 1.3 million jobs, and when you consider growth in population, it’s just a staggering number. Now, let me give you some IRS numbers since we were talking about them. The IRS reports for the most recent year that we have, which is always a couple of years behind (it may be last year), is 140 million income tax returns were filed. So, 140 million income tax returns were filed. For some of those, you can have small businesses. Some are going to be a husband and wife filing joint.
So let’s say, let’s be fair here, that 140 million income tax returns filed is how many earners, do you think? Let’s just go with 140 million just for the hell of it. I know there are some husbands and wives filing jointly, but let’s go with 140 million earners. That’s how many tax returns there are. That’s how many people reported taxable income: 140 million. The bottom 50% essentially paid nothing. This is income tax. This is not Social Security or payroll or any of that. This is strictly income tax.
You have 140 million income tax returns filed. The bottom 50%, essentially, didn’t pay anything. That leaves the top 50% who did pay for everything. That means 70 million people out of 300-plus million are paying for everything in this country. That is what that means. Seventy million people are paying the bills, and those people are the enemy of Barack Obama. Those people are the ones he claims aren’t paying their fair share. Those are the people he claims need a tax increase.
Those are the people he claims need to pay more, up until yesterday when he said there weren’t any victims, up until yesterday when he said that we have a country that rewards hard work. We have a president who wants to punish it. We have a president who looks at people earning a lot of money and finds something wrong with them. They’re earning too much. So 70 million people are paying for everything, income tax-wise, including the 12.5 million phones out there that Obama has given away.
More people have Obama phones than have Obama jobs.
But I think this is a staggering number: 70 million people out of 310 million are paying for everything, and they are the focus of Obama’s policies. Not helping them, not encouraging them, but targeting them. He’s telling us that 70 million Americans aren’t paying their fair share, and that 70 million is not just the rich. That’s everybody else. That’s the top 50%. The bottom 50, we know, are not paying any income tax.
Everybody agrees with that. Okay, 47%, 44%, whatever percentage that is, but we know that they’re not paying any income tax. That leaves, statistically, half of those 140 million earners. That’s 70 million. Do you think maybe it would be wise to have that number increase? Do you think maybe we could be raising a little bit more revenue to run the government and reduce the deficit if we had more people working? Do you think maybe if that 70 million became 90 million and then even more?
That’s the whole point of supply-side or whatever you want to call it, of trickle-down economics. The whole point of conservatism is you have as many people working as possible and paying taxes. You spread the burden around, but you increase — with lower taxes — employment and the number of people paying taxes. Today, 240 million people out of 310 are not paying for anything, income tax-wise. Now, they are paying their Social Security and Medicare and all that, but in terms of the income tax share? Nothing.
Wouldn’t it be better if that number was going up instead of going down?
The number’s going down, and the fact that those people are Obama’s targets, what’s the result of it? Well, here you go: “Demand for long-lasting manufactured goods plunged in August because of a huge drop in volatile commercial aircraft orders. But in a hopeful sign, orders that reflect business investment plans rose solidly.” So media is doing everything it can to report “a hopeful sign.” There’s nothing hopeful going on out there other than Obama’s potential defeat. The most hopeful thing for most people in this country is a new president with new policies, new ideas.
“US Unemployment Aid Applications at Two-Month Low.” Oh, whoopee do. That’ll get revised next week to the point that the number today is not accurate or true.
Snerdley, you’ll remember this. Twenty-four years ago, 23 years ago on this program we started talking, as a means of explaining and illustrating, the Social Security burden. At the time, 23, 24 years ago, it took the taxes of two workers to provide the benefit for one retiree, one recipient. We then projected that out and what it would be when it took the taxes of three workers to pay the benefits, four workers. No, it’s the other way around. It was four workers for every retiree, and we said, “What would happen when that starts shrinking and the burden is spread over fewer people?”
What happens when that burden gets down to two to one? You’re gonna have people stop working. Well, right now, with the numbers I just gave you on the income tax, one tax earner is paying for 3-1/2 people who aren’t. That’s the ratio of how these numbers work out. For every person paying income taxes, 3-1/2 people aren’t. But they’ve got their Obama phones. Speaking of which, let’s go back to Cleveland, Ohio. This is from yesterday, ladies and gentlemen.
WOMAN: Obama!
REPORTER: You got an Obama phone?
WOMAN: (screaming) Yes! Everybody in Cleveland, low minorities, got Obama phone. Keep Obama in president, you know? He gave us a phone!
REPORTER: He gave you a phone?
WOMAN: He gonna do more!
REPORTER: How did he give you a phone?
WOMAN: You sign up. If you’re… If you on food stamps, you on Social Security, you got low income, you disability…
REPORTER: Okay, what’s wrong with Romney, again?
WOMAN: Romney, he sucks! Bad!
RUSH: “Romney sucks!” She knows exactly how to qualify for a phone, but not to get a job.
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RUSH: The EIB Network and El Rushbo.
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RUSH: And the vocal portrayal there by white comedian Paul Shanklin.